It is still with considerable anger and frustration that I recall the unprecedented financial crisis that hit Korea nearly 20 years ago.

Yes, Koreans might have popped champagne a little too soon in 1995 when their per capita income topped $10,000 and the nation joined the club of mostly rich countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Yet a country's economy does not fall into such a grave crisis with just two years of "conspicuous consumption" by its people, who had just undergone three-and-a-half decades of hard struggle. The main culprits were family-run corporate empires built on huge debt with bureaucrats as their accomplices.

After Seoul went to the International Monetary Fund with hat in hand and came back with a bailout fund, the whole country had to swallow the bitterest pill of the IMF's prescription, to reform its economic system. Countless businesses went under and 1.7 million Koreans lost their jobs as many of the nation's banks and large companies were sold to foreigners at dirt cheap prices.

Through most of 1997 and 1998, the two busiest ― and gloomiest ― years of my career, I worked as the business editor of an English daily here. If anything, journalists find too much news better than too little. It is a different story, though, if most of the news items are sad, even tragic, ones ― of bankrupt firms, jobless workers, family breakups and suicides. I even had to serve not as an interviewer but as an interviewee for source-thirsty foreign media outlets.

Next year, chances are high Korea may undergo the economic troubles of two decades ago all over again. Most economic data ― growth, export, consumption, jobs and debt ― are even worse than in 1997 with the relatively deep foreign reserves being the only silver lining. International organizations like the OECD and IMF have already revised their 2017 growth projections for Korea downward, in stark contrast to their overall rosy forecasts for most other major economies, including the United States, China and Japan.

That alone should be reason enough for President Park Geun-hye to step down as soon as possible taking responsibility for the shameful influence-peddling scandal sparked by her confidant of four decades, Choi Soon-sil. But that must be no reason for the nation to grant indulgence ― yet again ― to business conglomerates which wasted little time clubbing together to donate no less than $68 million to two dubious foundations set up by Choi, nor allow these chaebol and bureaucrats to maintain their time-honored collusion, a corrupt system that cannot be described by any other words than kleptocracy.

It is wrong, even unconscionable, in this regard that most conservative media, particularly those financial dailies whose major shareholders and/or advertisers are big businesses, are describing chaebol as just victims of political extortion. "It's like adding insult to injury for chaebol owners, who were forced to part with money and take the witness stand in the National Assembly just because of it," goes a typical editorial of these economic dailies, which also say the ongoing parliamentary probes will "cause a managerial vacuum, taint their images abroad and pull down Korea's sovereign rating." This is little better than threatening the people taking national economy hostage.

We all know businesspeople do not give away money for nothing, however. They spend a thousand won only when they can earn ten thousands later. Take the Samsung Group. The world-famous IT company donated about 30 billion won ($25.5 million) to Choi's foundations some reports claimed that it enjoyed benefits more than 10 times the amount when the National Pension Service approved the dubious merger of two Samsung affiliates suffering losses of 350 billion won, allegedly by a cue from Cheong Wa Dae.

Also, could it have been mere coincidence the jailed executives of the SK and CJ groups were released right after the successful launches of the foundations? There is no free lunch in the world of business, and more so among corporate giants that divvy up the nation's wealth.

Actually, chaebol have always bought their way out of crises ever since Park's father, former President Park Chung-hee, adopted a national strategy more than five decades ago, which concentrated the limited resources of the nation on a handful of selected corporate players for "compressed growth." The nation had two opportunities to dismantle this collusion of politics and business. However, the political democratization of 1987 failed to spread to economic democratization and the 1997 currency crisis ended up relying on some chaebol to get rid of others. At the end of the day, surviving chaebol grew even bigger, polarizing even conglomerates between the "big five" and most other midsize, smaller ones.

Like it or not, most Koreans, myself included, cannot deny our economic reality, which cannot be discussed without the existence of these conglomerates. But that never means people should continue to accept the sprawling behemoths as they are. Economic power has long, if not openly, stayed over political power ― as former President Roh Moo-hyun famously admitted ― coercing or cajoling politicians to make, or break, policies for big businesses' benefit. So many chaebol, run by the descendants of founders, are no longer entrepreneurial, either, twisting the arms of small suppliers and seeking petty rights and interests instead of renovation.

All this shows the dire need for Korea to break out of the Park Chung-hee's economic paradigm, deepened and aggravated by his daughter. Conservatives are wrong. Korea's sovereign rating would fall if the nation again ends up slapping the wrists of tycoons for fear of short-term economic impacts, but would rise if Korea manages to improve chaebol's governance structure, make their financial sheets more transparent and force them to compete more openly and fairly.

I only hope there would be no busy but gloomy business editors next year, like their predecessors of two decades ago.

Choi Sung-jin is a contributing writer to The Korea Times and an adjunct professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Contact him at choisj1955@naver.com.